Taken Away
by carino2
Summary: It was a crime, really, that they'd taken me away from the world. They should be in jail, not throwing my life away like this. To think, once I'd sought to save them, and this is how they repay me? Opal's view from inside jail.
1. Capture

**A/N: This piece is completely Opal, so if you don't like it, you don't have to read it. Please crit harshly!**

I sucked in my breath as the team of overzealous fairies surrounded me. No need for them to worry; if I could actually _do _anything, I wouldn't be lying on the ground right now. Life had been cruel to me from a young age, no doubt about it. I had just been trying to push out all the cruelty I'd absorbed over the years. I didn't want it, any of it! All I'd wanted for myself was a good, productive life, and here I was collapsed in a stinking pigsty. My magic, my world, everything was gone. For once in my life, I had no idea what to do next.

"On your feet." A gun pointed at me and I considered disobeying for a brief second. Just letting myself go and ending it all. But then, I realized that I wouldn't be killed anyway—not by the wimps who had once been my relatives. Humans were so much more ruthless, so much crueler to life. In my mind, they actually had the right idea—you think population is high now? Imagine it without all the wars and homicides—but underground, I was outnumbered. Okay, then, I'd listen. Let them think that they could control me.

I gathered all of my remaining strength and did my best to stand. Instead, I collapsed on my knees, coughing. The idiots actually expected me to be able to stand up with my hands shackled! Sure, it normally wouldn't present too much of a challenge, but in the state I was in, I'd be lucky if I could walk. Another thought was hanging in the corner of my mind, trying to break through. How did they even tie my hands? I never noticed them doing it. What was going on here? What had happened? I managed to look up and catch sight of a video camera, and then someone turned out all the lights.

"…happening? What's wrong?"  
" … Not faking…right?…can you tell…"  
"…real, don't know what to do now…can't get a connection…"

Those voices may have just been in my head, but I wasn't sure. I was drifting through dreamland, drifting yet somehow going the speed of light. I saw the wall approaching me, saw it coming faster, faster, but I couldn't stop. I slammed into it and tasted blood.

"My god, her nose…"  
"…not broken, just hurt…"

"Let me try to fix it…"  
And then a gruesome crack. I tried to open my eyes, but everything was blurry and in focus at the same time. I couldn't smell, couldn't breathe, couldn't taste anything but my own blood, my own pain. And suddenly it all became too much. I retched. Surely, anything must be better than tasting that. I realized at this point that I was crying; tears were streaming down my face and their taste mixed with that of the bile in my mouth. I thought nothing could be worse than the pain, but now I realized…this was, the taste of my hopelessness and humiliation. I retched again, but hardly anything came up. In my mind, I was condemned to forever be known as Hopeless Opal; Stupid, Demented, Freak Opal. And there was nothing I could do about it.

I felt hands hauling me roughly to my feet, and I did my best to comply. On the way to the shuttle, I kept my head down, afraid that the camera would catch me bloodied and lost, instead of showing the beautiful genius that I was. But the damage had already been done, and no longer was I great. Now I was just Opal Koboi, the pixie who was normal once more.

I had been given a shower and new clothes—prison clothes, of course—but still no food. I was literally starving. Never before had I been forced to work for my food, but that woman…no, that_bitch_ had practically made me her slave. "Fetch this, Belinda, do that. Help your mommy. She's getting old." Ha! As if she knew anything about old. I had been around long, long before her. Did she notice? Did she realize that I was so much smarter, so much more experienced than her? No. And since I no longer had the _Mesmer_, I couldn't control her. I no longer had the capability to bend her to my will.

Maybe I would be in jail, but somehow that woman would be found and disposed of. I had to know that it had happened. Maybe for proof, I would demand that her heart be brought back to me, just like that mud man fairy tale. But no, her heart wasn't enough. The heart could belong to anyone, and it wasn't likely I'd get one from that heartless wretch. For all I knew, it could be stolen out of a hospital donor box! No, as ironic as a heart would be, I would need something more. Her head, I decided. That would do. That couldn't be faked. And then I could burn it, letting the fire feast on all of my anger at her.

Food—a steaming bowl of soup and a hunk of bread—interrupted my musings. I tore into the bread hungrily, ravaging it completely. Chewing hurt my nose, but there wasn't much I could do about that. Between a bit of pain and death by starvation, I'd take the pain any day. Even if the food was prison rejects, I'd eat it. I was so hungry, I would have eaten anything at that moment, and I should be glad the food was as edible as it was. I turned to the soup. In the time it had taken me to eat the bread, the soup had become only lukewarm, but I gulped it down as if it were the water of life. For me, it practically was. I was so thin, so underfed that I almost looked anorexic! The soup felt slimy going down, but I didn't care. I couldn't get enough. When the guards saw how hungry I was, they brought me another bowl, this one growing cold. I felt both their eyes and the eyes of the cameras on me, but for one second, I didn't think about my image. Such was the power of hunger; for it to make me forget my predicament for even a second was impressive. Even the indignity of the soup slopping on me and tracing a path down my neck couldn't concern me at that moment. All I wanted was the food. Finally finished, I set the bowl outside and waited for it to be whisked away. And then I lay down to sleep.


	2. Emotion

When I awoke, the camera lenses were still trained on me. Not that I was surprised. According to the Brill brothers, Haven had run hours worth of specials on special old me while I was in a coma. And half of them were "updates" of my status in the clinic. How I wished I could go back to those days, days of comfort where I had to do nothing but think. 

A pity I'd already used the coma trick. This time, if I passed out, they'd no doubt bring an IV and a med kit into my cell. No way would they risk having me escape again. Not that they needed to fret. I had no way to get out. I had no more clones, no more magic, and no inside helpers. I'd need a miracle to escape from this cell, and in my state, there was no way I could make a miracle happen.

I looked at the luminescent clock on the wall: 3:30. I had been taken into custody at around 6:00 this morning, and I'd gone to sleep shortly afterward. Actually, that was yesterday morning now. I figured that I'd been asleep for around 17 hours. And now I felt so much better. I was aware. I actually had _energy_, for god's sake. It had been too long since I had had excess energy. Another reason to make that bitch pay for what she'd done to me. She had wasted me, ignored my talents, and been as condescending as anyone I'd ever known.

My only escape from her had been this living hell. The only redeeming factor of this place was the cameras trained on me 24/7, just waiting to see what I'd do. And the most frustrating part was that I had no idea how long they'd be here! I was certain it would be quite awhile, but I needed them here to keep me sane. I could look pretty for them all day long, but I just had to hope they'd keep lapping it up. There was nothing else for me to do, nothing!

The fairy people were so stupid, so shortsighted. They were blinded by their fear of my ambitions. I was so smart and so beautiful, yet they'd locked me in here and all but thrown away the key. They'd taken me, along with my gifts, away from the world! I longed to scream, cry, shout, ANYTHING to break the unnatural silence of this place. In Howler's Peak, even the goblins went silent after awhile. This place had a way of sucking the soul out of you. Even if I could have thrown a silent tantrum, though, it would have gotten me nowhere. Plus, the cameras would catch it. They may be unmanned now, but trust me, they'd be checked. And I had no desire for Haven to see me, Opal Koboi, going to pieces like Foaly had during my quest to save Haven. That ridiculous centaur had never been anywhere_near_ as talented as I had; still, he had gotten to the top through pure sexism. That and a backwards sort of racism, I supposed. Everyone always felt _sorry_ for the centaurs since there were so few of them left. But I was better than he was, so much smarter, and I refused to throw a tantrum anywhere it could be recorded. Unlike him, I would not stop fighting. I would never give in, and people would remember me as Opal Koboi, the pixie who dared to be great.

I must have drifted off again in my reflections, because the next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming into my cell. Psuedo-sunlight, of course, since we were so far underground. I glanced at the clock: 6:00 am. 24 hours since I'd been removed from the world. I wondered if the world missed me, but before I had time to contemplate that, my cell door was yanked open and I was escorted to the showers. At least there was no surveillance in the shower room. But even if there had been a camera, it wouldn't have been sharp enough to catch the tears intermixed with the water running down my face.

After I was clean, I exited the showers. I was getting used to this routine already. Dry off, dress, head to breakfast. I wondered how many days it would go on.

As I was about to leave, something caught my eyes. It was a mirror, cracked, scummy, and pitted, but a mirror nonetheless. I grabbed my towel and wet it, wiping years of grime off the mirror. _Apparently goblins don't use mirrors much,_ a part of my brain thought. Once it was at least somewhat clean, I chanced a look. The picture in the mirror almost took my breath away. Even now, so badly outnumbered, so hopeless and dejected, so beaten, I still looked stunning. _Why and I still here? _I thought, angrily. _I should be a model! I deserve to be shown off!_ But even as these thoughts entered my head, they were pushed away. I just stared at myself. Yesterday, in my mug shot, I had looked how I had felt—there had been residual blood on my face; my nose had been slightly swollen; my cheekbones protruded from my sunken face. I had looked like a poor, lost, tired girl. But not anymore. I was myself again, down the slightly malicious glint in my eyes. I don't know how long I would have stood there transfixed by my beauty had the LEP not sent in guards—females, of course—to see what was going on.

The fact that they dared enter my sacred area, invade my privacy, and take away what little I had left infuriated me. As they surrounded me to take me out, a flash of auburn hair caught my attention. Familiar auburn hair, attached to a familiar-looking Recon officer.

"Short!" I screamed, becoming more agitated. "You _will_ be DEAD one day like I planned, dead and dishonored." The elf didn't move an inch. Didn't even bat an eyelash. Well, _that_ wouldn't do. "You look at me, Short, you look at me!" My voice was so piercing I knew she heard it, yet she ignored my demands. The other guards were exchanging glances, but not Holly. If I had to guess, I'd say her gaze was boring a hole in the far wall. "You don't deserve to be alive, elf. You only survived because of dumb luck. Pure, dumb, LUCK!" I was practically frothing at the mouth, and still she refused to meet my gaze. I had seen her shift guiltily, though, so I knew she was paying attention. That was almost a given, though. Who could _not_ be? "Are you still listening, girly? Cause you'd BETTER be!" my voice didn't even sound my own anymore, distorted by rage, amplified by the walls. "You think you're so great, you're all 'Ooh-I'm-A-Girl-In-The-LEP, but you AREN'T! You're nothing, Short, NOTHING! No brains. No beauty. You've mad it this far through LUCK and by becoming ALLIES with an unpredictable, wannabe genius MUD MAN!" I saw her stiffen. Good. "But you have NO smarts of your own, not even a bit of an endearing smile. And one day when little Arty goes HAYWIRE, you'll play along like everything's normal. And then, _Captain,_ everyone will see how DUMB and UNWORTHY YOU ARE!"

The sudden silence made my ears ring. And, with nothing better to end the performance with, I toppled into a dead faint.

They must have caught me as I fell, because this time there was no explosion of pain, no sickening crunch, no glutinous drip of blood. I somehow felt them carry me down the hall and into my cell, where I knew the cameras were catching this. I bet viewers were loving every minute of their Opal-faints-again newscasts. And I knew all of the reporters were hoping I'd wake up _soon_ so they could interview me. If I could have, I would have smiled. But my body lay unresponsive on the floor, and all I could do was to retreat further into my mind. I curled into a ball safe inside my head, and the day passed over my unfeeling body.

When I next cracked open my eyes, it was almost day again. I stretched and massaged the pins and needles from my newly re-inhabited body. Though it seemed a useful way to escape, the fainting was totally out of my control. If I got too emotional, it seemed my mind would check out and leave my body to fend for itself. And my body wasn't too good at that. I had to get these black outs under control. Not being the boss of myself scared me—I couldn't let anyone else see this weakness. I would do this, make no mistake. I was strong enough. And I would beat this fainting disease. After all, I was Opal Koboi.


	3. Reflection

After my shower that morning, I went to my new refuge: the mirror. In an almost sickening fit of kindness, someone had cleaned if for me. The crack was now less visible, and the scratches and pockmarks had all but disappeared. _I don't need your charity,_ I thought. _I can do this on my own._ But again, my anger was pushed away by my beauty. 

Unbelievably, I looked even better than I had the day before—or maybe that was just the mirror being cleaner. But no, it wasn't. I was starting to look healthy again, more filled out and less anorexic. It's saying something that the prison food was better than the crap I'd been forced to eat when that lady thought I was her daughter. I had more energy now than yesterday, and the glint in my eyes glittered on maniacal. And that was just the start. My hair—my lovely, black hair—was shining as if it had a life of its own, making a perfect frame for my eyes. Bangs brushed across my forehead, accenting my heart-shaped face. My lips were bright red, and my skin seemed to emit a glow. My eyes were indescribable, teeming with emotion while at the same time appearing to be behind shutters. Or, more accurately, bars. I was amazing, no doubt about it. The only imperfection I could find was my fingernails, torn into ragged strips by my teeth. Only they showed my troubled soul, my worries and fears.

"_Opal, look at what a mess you are."_ What? I turned around, but no one was there. _"Look at your nails, Opal. They're a mess. Just like you're a mess."_ Who was that? The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. _"Your life's a mess."_ Where was it coming from? I looked around, searching the room for screens, speakers, anything. I would destroy whoever dared insult me in such a way. _"Go ahead and try, missy. Let's see what you've got."_ No, that wasn't, couldn't be who it was. Someone had stolen my father's words, that was all. Someone had found out about my violent past and was baiting me with my father's ugly words. _"You think you can fight me?"_ That had to be it. _"Come and get me."_ Relax. Breathe. That's all it was. _"You're just a goddamned girl."_ Clenching my fists, I sat down. I would not be doing this again. No one, _no one_ was going to break me, especially not by bringing up my past. I was through with all of that. _"Let's see what you've got…you baby."_ No more. Breathing as though I'd actually just been fighting my father, I laid down on the floor. There was so much ugliness inside, wanting to come out, but I wouldn't let it. I wouldn't—couldn't—go crazy now. To avoid the humiliation of being found as I was, I picked myself up. Deep breaths calmed me, or at least made me look calm and collected. I stole one last glance at myself, and headed out to face the cameras that I knew would be waiting.

Time seems to drag on, in prison. The days are so similar that they all seem to bleed into one, making it seem like 24 hours lasts for so much longer. It was easy to see how everyone in here was crazy; my incredibly strong mind had probably been the only thing saving me. The goblins never stood a chance.

Let me tell you, it was humiliated being incarcerated among my old lackeys. Not that they would know who was in the cell next to them. I'd been here for a long time, and I'd yet to hear anyone say a word. When I walked the halls, the occupants of the cells gazed blankly out. I don't think they noticed me, or registered that I was there. I doubt they were even in control of themselves anymore, they just…existed. I doubted that they moved, slept, even would have doubted that they ate, but that surely wasn't possible.

I seemed the only alert one in the whole place, but I knew that was just an illusion. I had been tossed back in the far reaches of the jail, back where the ones with a life sentence had been sent. I knew I'd be no better off. Though I still hadn't been put on trial, I'd realized that no one out there understood me. They were all too simple, too brainwashed by society to understand me. Society needed a fresh thinker like I needed a breath of fresh air—anything to banish the haze.

The cameras still sat outside my cell, but I'd never been allowed to talk to them. The reporters shied away from me, and I was kept under constant guard.

The only place I was still not watched over were the shower rooms, which soon became my favorite place. Once they'd ascertained that I would have no way of escaping from them, I had been allowed in there as much as I wanted, no, _needed_ to be. It served as my breath of fresh air, at least for a while.

I never ever tired of looking at myself, and I thought of numerous ways to bring the reporters, and indeed The People, over to my side. I don't consider it crazy, talking to and interviewing myself. It was probably the thing that kept me sane, actually. I was preparing for the outside world to see me. This time, I wanted them judge me right and see how wrong they'd been.

If only I had been alive long enough ago, I'm positive we would have beaten the mud men instead of being stuck down here. I could have ruled, would have ruled so well. I deserved to be practically worshipped, and I knew it. I also knew that other were afraid of me, and jealous. That was why I'd been persecuted. And that was why I had tried to destroy them all. There was no room in this world for subversiveness. I longed for a new world, one where loyalty and brilliance would be rewarded above all, and my beauty would set me above the rest. Right now, my desire for revenge and recognition were all that were keeping me going.

I was in front of the mirror again, a place I'd been spending increasing amounts of time. I'd heard the guards muttering of obsession; the reporters were gushing about this odd new fixation. But it's not as if I'd never been called crazy before. I could feel their eyes on me out there, hear them thinking about me. _They_ were the obsessed ones, but I couldn't be picky. I had to take attention where I could get it. If I could get the guards on my side, I had hope of getting out, of escaping this horrible, horrible waste of my life.

I just stood and looked at myself. After all this hardship, all the cruelty and ugliness that had shaped and affected me, I was still beautiful. That was probably one of my greatest achievements to date, one of the things I was most proud of. You could choose many things in your life, and I had chosen to be beautiful. I'd always forced the ugliness out, before it could affect my looks. I had no room for it, and my greatest fear was that someday, the ugliness would take over my body and soul. So far, I'd kept it out. I was beautiful, and my mind remained whole and undamaged.

I think I would've spent all of my time in the bathroom if I'd been allowed, but the next best thing happened: they brought a mirror for my cell. I was still under constant surveillance, so I couldn't be as free as I was in the shower rooms. But it made me feel like I was not so alone. I don't know why they brought the mirror in, but I didn't complain. I sat by it every day and fell asleep by it every night. When I woke up, I was the first thing that I saw.

The mirror made me love and appreciate myself even more, and it came so I couldn't believe the things I'd done. I never should have worked with Cudgeon; he was the reason I failed. Next time, I promised myself, I would work totally and completely alone. No partners, no henchmen, just me. I would get out, and once I did, I would take my rightful place as leader of the world.

I would have confided to myself in whispers, but I couldn't risk it. The cameras were too numerous, and the silence in that place too deafening. I was loath to break it, even to serenade the world with my beautiful voice. So I just looked at myself, and I looked back. We had conversations with our eyes, but oh, how I wished the girl in the glass could talk.


	4. Ragged

One day, I was sitting alone in the shower rooms when I felt the back of my neck prickle. I knew this feeling, and I knew what was coming next. I quickly slipped down to the floor so I wouldn't hurt myself. I was being watched somehow, and all hell was about to break loose. 

"_What are you doing this time?"_ I winced. Even now, decades later, this fight stuck out in my memories. _"Have you decided again that just being a girl isn't good enough?"_ I didn't want to relieve this again. _"Do you want to be something else?"_ It was one of the worst. _"Isn't what I've given you enough?"_ The voice was louder now, almost deafening. _"Are you not grateful?"_ Why didn't' they hear? _"Do you think someone else would be better to you?"_ Why didn't they help? _"You're wrong!" _Were they torturing me? _"And you're _damn_ lucky I'm so good to you."_ Were they trying to break me? _Slap "You don't deserve it, all that I've done for you."_ My breath was now coming in harsh, ragged gasps; it was stuck in my throat like my mind was stuck in the past. _A punch, in the eye_ I tried not to scream as I relived my worst nightmare. _"Get up, you baby."_ No no no no no, keep quiet. _"Stop crying." _Yes, that's right. Shh. _"This punch is why slap girls can't handle business! punch"_ Calm. Breathe. I'm okay. _"Because you're all such wimps! a punch that drops me to the floor"_ I'm still whole. This isn't real. _"Got it?" _This isn't happening. _"I said, GOT IT?"_ Not real. _"I asked you a question!"_

"OKAY!" I scream, surprised to hear my voice. "Okay." Only a whisper now. "I understand." And then I'm gone.

My mind floats. I wonder how it is that someone knows. How they found out. And I hear the blessed sound of people talking.

"…okay?"

"…don't know…been a long time since…"

"Breathing steady…"

And I know that I've been rescued this time, taken away from my torturer. Saved by the LEP. Who would've thought? But I will not let whoever this person is torture me. I will find them and dispose of them. And then I will find their source of information and show the world how crazy I really could have become. I could have gone psycho, running over anyone in my path and taking my anger out of the innocent. But I haven't become the crazy person. I've kept myself sane, and become brilliant. Once everyone knows, they will understand their subservience. I vow revenge on my tormenter one last time, and then let my thoughts drift away, taking me to a safe place.

This time, my coma lasted longer than ever—a good 36 hours. Every time, the return to my body becomes a bit less comfortable and requires more effort. I stretched slowly, feeling the blood flowing back into my arms and legs, forming a steady pulse that shot all the way through my extremities. The blood flow caused me physical pain, and I hat to try my hardest to not cry out. I but my lip, but even that couldn't keep the tears out of my eyes.

It took five minutes for the pain to subside, but let me tell you, it felt like hours. After the dragged on period or re-inhabitation had ended, I decided to try sitting up. Ouch! My hip hurt from being laid on for one and a half days, and my muscles were straining to lift me. I frowned. This wasn't how it should be. I felt old, frail, and weak. By mud men standards, I was ancient, but to the fairies I was, or should have been at the best part of my life. Why was everything falling apart here?

As I pondered the mystery, I chanced a glance outside my cell door. The cameras were there, as always. There appeared to be a flurry of motion, and I could hear several reporters on their cell phones, calling in the information for a voice-over. I allowed myself the luxury of a smile. Still famous, then. At least _that_ was not likely to be taken away from me. After all, who _doesn't_ love hearing about every twitch of Haven's own psychotic pixie?

It was saddening, though, that I was being through the filters of the media. Rather than being infamous, I should be famous! If the fairy people were a bit more open-minded, I'd be out of here quickly. Actually, if the fairy people were a bit more open-minded, I wouldn't be _in_ this hellhole. Had they only listened and been brave enough to kill the med men when they'd had the chance, I would never have tried to wipe them out. I had just been trying to teach them a lesson, really; they needed to know how violent the mud men really were. If they got wind of the fairies, Haven would quite possibly become Hell. And being underground, it already had the proper location. Throw in our large jails and advanced technology, and no one would be getting out. My way, those that weren't wiped out by the probe would at least have a warning and a fighting chance.

I actually hoped that the mud men would continue underground investigations and discover us. I appeared to be one of them; heck, I had made myself one of them! I would be saved and everyone else, doomed. Since they had refused my saving them before, I figured it would only be fair.

I realized at this time that I was swaying and about to fall over. Perhaps I should have gotten some food before I got lost in my thoughts again, but there was something undeniably alluring about doing nothing but exploring my brain. Now, though, I was absolutely starving!

Almost as if my thoughts had been read, a bowl and a plate appeared next to my door. I hurried over to find the food, relishing in the feeling of eating something. The food was really the only way to keep track of the time in this place. Sure, my cell had a clock, but it didn't even work correctly. I suppose in some ways I was lucky; no one else had a clock in their cell. But my clock would periodically stop, either that or move so slow that every minute lasted a lifetime. And then there were the times it would jump erratically ahead; I supposed to make up for the lost time earlier.

I longed for a calendar to show me how long I'd been here. To me, it seemed like ages. I didn't know how long it really was that I'd been trapped here, maybe a month or more, but it couldn't have been much longer than that. Not much about me had changed, for one thing. Oh, sure, I'd gained back a lot of the weight I'd lost, but other than that, I looked the same. Same beautiful smile. Same deep eyes. Same ragged fingernails. The first two, I was proud of, but the latter was something I would do everything I could to change.


	5. Persistence

Eventually a lawyer was brought in to review my case and prepare me for my trip to court. As much as I'd been dreading this, it also brought some relief. The appearance of the lawyer proved that time was passing. I'd lost count of it days, maybe weeks ago. But the arrival of another fairy, though it did not necessarily bode well for me, at least proved that I hadn't gone crazy yet.

I tried to figure out how long I'd been here for, I really did. But time has a way of evading you when you do nothing but eat or sleep. Things here were not run on a timetable so much as a basis of need: I was fed whenever I was hungry and could shower when I wanted to. After the first few days, I hardly bothered looking at the clock anymore—I knew it had betrayed me. I would glance at it to see that it hadn't changed at all in what must have been hours. I was on my own in this place, that was for sure. No one, not even my lawyer, was on my side.

That day—at least, I _think_ it was day, it was hard to tell where I was—started off normal. Wake up, shower, mirror, breakfast. If you could rely on the clock, it was 3:00 when my lawyer arrived. She was blunt. She advised me to plead insanity and hope that the courts would go easy on me. Easy—not that it mattered. Whether I was given 100 years or life, I'd likely die young without my magic to aid me. And I wasn't about to plead insanity. That would be breaking down. Letting society win. I had no intention of letting The People think they'd beat me. One day, they'd see that I had been right and honor me. Sadly, that day would probably be long after my demise. One of the worst things about having a longer lifespan is that change takes so much longer. I tried explaining this to the lawyer, but she wasn't having any of it. Apparently not a bit believer in free thought, then. I could sense a personality conflict, which was sure to be another obstacle to my case.

This, like most of my predictions, proved true. We'd gotten nowhere in our meeting, and the lawyer, so-called protector of justice, had apparently given up. She was a perfect example of a close-minded lawyer who went only by the books. I, on the other hand, had the courage to challenge age-old ideas. This annoyed her to no end. After a fifth argument over the definition of insane, she stormed out of my cell.

I knew she thought I was stupid...I could see her telling that to the cameras outside. No doubt another brainwashing special would be hosted by PPTV. After all the work they'd done to discredit me, I knew I'd never get a fair trial. "Fair..." What did it matter anyway? I wasn't even sure what the word meant anymore. To have a truly fair trial, they'd have to have a jury of my peers, which I had none. No one in this place was complex enough to understand my ideas. In truth, I'd only ever meant two people who's intelligence was anywhere near the level of mine, and they chose to confine their mind to the common ideals of a society much less advanced than them. As for the regular fairies in Haven, I outshone them and they'd isolated me out of jealousy.

Even the cameramen had not approached me for so much as a quote the whole time I'd been here. I guess they'd either been intimidated by me or ordered to keep their distance. I hadn't gotten a chance to explain my actions and smooth things over, and I knew I never would. These people—they were insane. They were biased and inflexible and, though they didn't see it, almost as destructive as the mud men. The same faults—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride—plagued them, but they were too supremist to notice it. The only thing The People weren't guilty of was perfection, thought that's the one thing they'd never expect. Normal people didn't seem to understand what made perfection so special, that being all the flaws that surrounded it. It was that knowledge, along with the imperfections surrounding me, that made me so special and so, discriminated against.

Everybody else—the ones who were under the false impression that they were the perfect ones here—found what they thought were problems with me and so boosted their self-esteem. I was thankful, and still am, that I never needed to compare myself to others in order to validate myself. I could always look at myself and know how much I was worth. I was perfection; there was no one else like me; everyone else was imperfect.

Life was that easy to figure out, but people spent their lives lying to themselves instead of searching for truth. The lied so much that they came to believe their lies and tried to pass them off as truth. If they were believed by enough people, these lies became truth. These false truths corrupted our society. That was why I'd tried to save it.

The lies, however, were structured in a way as to keep me from doing even that. Their orchestrators had found a way to subliminally control the people and, thought police or no, there was a subconscious feeling that Big Brother was watching. The only difference was that, in our society, Big Brother and the thought police were everyone, people who would gladly detain anyone who went against their ideals. The liars called me insane and dangerous. They didn't look to see that they'd be the cause of The People's collapse.

I wondered how society could be so visually impaired, and then answered my question. Obviously, it was because no one had ever taught people how to see, and anyone who tried would be jailed and possibly even killed. I was proof of that.

Our society, in its creation, was only made to be destroyed. Hopefully enough would remain after The People were gone to alert other societies to the mistakes made by fairykind, but I didn't believe that would happen. If it had, The People undoubtedly would have found some sort of warning.

I soon realized, though, that this may not have been the case. Perhaps the only legacy of fallen peoples was that their faults were passed on to those who came after. If this was the case, the cause of their downfall could likely be determined by studying current human and fairy populations rather than past ones. If there were clues, they were likely not the big things people thought they were; rather they were more discreet, and for that, more dangerous. I knew that the realization of our faults was just an idle dream that would never be fulfilled, but I needed something to hold on to. I could only hope that one day, there would be someone who could build on my work and reach these same conclusions before it was too late.

I groaned aloud as I realized that I had left no records of my findings anywhere. I had kept my thoughts to myself. I had not dared to write anything down for fear it would be seen by the wrong people and my plans would be thwarted. In the end, it hadn't seemed to matter. My plans had been stymied anyways, and now there was no source explaining my actions to the outside world.

I eyed the cameras, wishing futilely that someone would come and let me talk so that my thoughts and words might be recorded before it was too late. I stared into the lenses, willing my eyes to convey my messages to the world. The cameras started back with no signs of either affirmation or defeat.

The lenses remained unhelpful, even in my dreams.


End file.
